"Last week a large, profitable company sued a small start-up business for patent infringement. As a non-legal person, I can only guess that this sort of thing must happen fairly often. I would also guess that the large companies, which have the means to hire crackerjack legal teams and drag cases out, must often win. And while I guess I feel bad for the small businesses, I've never really cared before now. Because this time, the stakes are high. This time, it's my daughter's voice on the line. Literally." Infuriating. Maybe these are the kinds of stories we need to get normal people to care enough to force lawmakers to change. Sadly, the big bags of money from Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle are probably far more important to them than this sad story.

Problem is the obscene amount of money it takes to bring a drug to market. There are also a large amount of drugs that do "not" get FDA approval and literally millions of $$$$ go down the tube. Once a drug company does get approval they have only something like 7 or 10 years to recoup the investment then the Generic's then start puking them out.

Judging by the obscene profits that the pharmaceutical giants report year after year, I have to guess that the R&D sob story given by apologists for the industry is -ahem- overstated to an extent.

Pfizer 2011 earnings: 17.19 billion USD. Profits: 3.74 billion USD.

2008 salary of CEO of PhRMA, lobby for the industry: 4.48 million USD.

Somehow I don't think that food-on-the-table or recouping investments is a problem for people in this industry. In fact, I can't find (in an admittedly brief search) a single unprofitable year for any of the major innovators in the field. Could it be that they are overstating the problem a bit?

To me, it is the same old story:

PATENT DEFENDER: We just want to put food on our tables and recoup our investment.

ROUGH TRANSLATION: We want you to respect our right to make obscene amounts of money at the expense of society. "An honest living" isn't enough. We're superstars - where would you be without us. We want ALL of the money.

Is it any wonder that some of the people living in the larger society take offense to this position? Especially when we are all hit in the pocket to sustain this multi-billion dollar profit?